The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (17 page)

Nelka wore an old shift of Magda’s. It clung to her body, wet with sweat, and she sat on the stool precariously, gripping the edge of the table to keep her balance when the pain rose and the vise that clamped her belly tightened and pressed. Her belly was hard as iron and low, and Nelka groaned with the increasing waves of pain.

“Send Hansel out,” Nelka said to Magda when the last pain ended. “Send them both out.”

“The girl is only over the grippe for a few days. They have to stay warm.”

Hansel knelt beside Nelka and held icicles to her lips. They were bright red from where Nelka had bitten them to keep from screaming.

Magda sat in the chair and waited. The girl was strong. The baby was turned right. She had made sure of that a week ago. It had not slipped wrongly, and the head was down. She rocked and hummed and waited.

Gretel lay on the platform as far into the corner as she could squeeze. She lay with her face to the rough boards of the wall and breathed with her mouth open. She’d seen a dog do it once, the pups coming out in thin sacks, the mother dog tearing the sack and eating it, licking the pups.

That was when she was somewhere else. A long time ago. The pups and the mother dog had disappeared the next day. She wondered what had happened to them. She remembered the dog grunting and moaning, panting with her mouth open and her sides heaving.

Hansel wiped Nelka’s face with the melted water from the icicles. Nelka smiled at him.

“Will you help me take care of my baby, Hansel?”

The boy shook his head. “I hate it.”

“Pant, girl,” Magda said. “Pant. Like a dog.”

Nelka tried to think only of the panting. When the contraction ended, she sat gasping.

“Why didn’t Telek bring you?” Magda asked.

“He said he would be gone today.”

The two women looked in each other’s eyes for a second and then away.

“Probably gathering wood for someone.”

“Yes,” Nelka said. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, waiting to fall into the next chasm of pain that was ahead of her.

The Russian was smiling all the time now. The tracks led due east, through the forests and over the swamps into the heart of his country. The trains ran east carrying guns and ammunition and troops to kill his people. They came out filled with German wounded, picking up any Poles who were strong enough to work as slaves in Germany.

“We must stop a train going east,” the Russian said. “You’re sure of the schedules?”

“They radioed the man in Bialystok that it’s coming. Unless they change their timetables.”

They walked down the tracks, the trees pressing so close to the line that branches had been cut or the trains could never have passed. It was late afternoon and the light was changing.

We’d better hurry, Telek thought.

They rounded a bend in the track, and everyone smiled. The Lithuanian didn’t have to tell them. This was the place, a broad meadow in the heart of the thickest forest, an open space.

“Telek?” The Lithuanian called him. “You know the woods and how to use them. Put every man in position. Help them set up the guns.”

Telek moved off, followed by the others. Only the woman hesitated. She looked back at the Russian and the Lithuanian and her husband who bent over a knapsack near the train tracks. When she turned, Telek caught her eye and she stared him down.

“You,” he said to Lydka. “Get pine branches and make a wide broom. There won’t be a footprint on this meadow when the train comes.”

“But it’s coming at night. They wouldn’t see our footprints.”

Telek stopped walking and turned to the boy. “What if there are lights on the train? What if a party of soldiers comes through on foot?”

Lydka nodded, his cheeks red with shame. “I know, Telek,” he said. He ran off toward the forest, shambling in the snow as if he were truly his own nickname and a calf leaping in the field.

Telek looked around the bowl of the meadow. It was a good place. With this terrain, most of them might live to see the sun come up. He hadn’t expected so much.

Nelka tried to sit on the stool and let gravity pull the baby out of her, but the pain was so heavy it pressed her to the floor. Gretel lay on the platform, not asleep but tired. Hansel had covered his head with the blankets and his hands were pressed over his ears to try and shut out the awful noise.

“Magda,” Nelka cried. “How much longer? I didn’t know it would be so terrible.” She moaned as Magda’s hands, strong now with the memory of all the babies she had brought into the world, kneaded her belly.

“Soon,” Magda said.

“I want a daughter. They kill all our sons. Pray it’s a girl,” Nelka nearly shouted.

Magda only shook her head.

“Do you know what the baby is, Magda?” Hansel asked.

Magda smiled.

How can she know? the boy thought. But he knew Magda did.

“Ahhhhhh.” The howl was squeezed out of Nelka’s throat. She wasn’t Nelka anymore. There was none of her left. The pain had eaten all of the girl she had been.

“Magda,” she called, needing to confess it. “My husband may be alive in Siberia, and I’m in love with Telek.”

Magda said no words of absolution or comfort. She only nodded.

The Russian unwrapped the packages. He breathed lightly and handled them with hands so gentle you would have thought he was touching a woman.

The Mechanik watched and waited. He was ecstatic, squatting there beside the cold steel rails. He knew about machines, and what were bombs but a sort of machine?

The parts lay beside the track, and the Russian looked at the Mechanik. The Russian’s eyes glittered and his mouth was slightly open.

The Mechanik picked up the parts and checked them with strong fingers. He wasn’t as gentle as the Russian. It couldn’t hurt anyone until—until he made it.

It was lovely to make things. He smiled to himself, and the others moved a little away.

There were only three parts. The container was a Soviet ammunition box. The explosive was cheddite manufactured by the ZWZ, those brave men, in Poland. The fuse, the thing that made the whole thing come alive, was a compression fuse, and he checked it carefully.

There was a vial of sulfuric acid and paper. He sniffed it and caught a faint whiff of the rotten smell of the acid. He opened the second vial of potassium chloride and rolled the paper to fit inside. It soaked up the solution, and he connected the paper to the vial of sulfuric acid.

Now came the more difficult part. He thought about the best way to do the job. Lying on his stomach to examine the steel rail, he left the bomb behind him and crawled six or seven feet, staring at the rail and the space under it.

Here. The earth had worn away a little. It would be faster to dig.

He rose and pointed. “Dig here,” he said. “The hole has to be deeper than the box at first. Then I’ll adjust it. And dig out as much of the rail around it for as many feet as you can. It’ll make the rail move more when the train comes.”

The Russian and the Lithuanian took turns chipping the frozen earth out from under the rail. It took them nearly an hour before the Mechanik was satisfied. Finally it was done.

The Mechanik smiled at them and his smile was as sweet as an angel’s. “Move back to the woods. I’ll try to make sure that if it goes off too soon it tears up the rail when it explodes.”

And you with it, the two other men thought at the same time. They each shook his hand, and the Russian kissed the Mechanik on both cheeks like a brother.

The Mechanik was alone on the tracks. He placed the fuse on the bed of cheddite in the box and raised it to his eye level. It was perfect. Gently he lowered the lid, his eyes watching as it closed, the top finally going down the last half inch slowly, until he felt, rather than heard, the lid meeting the resistance of the fuse and closing.

Nothing happened. It was ready. He hummed to himself, picked up the box and carried it gently, as if it were a baby, the six feet to the perfect square hole. He put it in the hole and measured with his finger. The box had to fit tightly under the rail, and there was still space between the box’s top and the rail when he put it in the hole. He had to make the hole shallower.

It took him a while to remove the box and pack the soil so the lid of the box fitted snugly under the rail. He couldn’t force the box or it would blow up before the train came. He positioned it inch by inch in the hole, and the top touched the rail line now. It was done.

He was pleased with his work. Even if it did blow up early, the track would be broken and could be covered with snow to conceal the break. The train would derail anyway. He looked up and saw Lydka standing with his broom of pine boughs.

“I have to sweep up the footprints when you’re done,” the boy whispered.

The Mechanik kept on humming and nodded. He turned and walked toward the woods where the others waited. Lydka followed him backward, sweeping the Lithuanian’s, the Russian’s, the Mechanik’s, and his own prints away in long careful strokes of the branches.

It was odd, the Mechanik thought. The song he had been humming. He hadn’t heard it since he was a boy, but it was that song. The Mechanik laughed out loud, and the Russian waved his hand at him from the trees. The Mechanik waved back, and he laughed again. Strange the way his mind worked today. He had been humming the Kaddish exactly the way his father had. He had been humming the prayer for the souls of the dead.

It was the end now. Nelka screamed rhythmically as the pain became one long pain with no space in it to rest. Magda knelt beside her and worked. She massaged the skin with oil around Nelka’s vagina where the baby’s head was crowning.

“Good girl, good girl. You won’t tear. It’s a nice, slow, good baby.”

Nelka’s screams became deep grunts of effort ending with a shriek, and Hansel clutched his knees on the platform, tears running down his face. He hated the baby. It was killing Nelka. The dirty baby. He sobbed and his nose ran, mixing with the tears.